Category: Sports

Tennis For Fun Comes To Tampa Palms!

On a slightly warm but otherwise perfect Thursday evening, a dozen or so special needs adults gathered at Tampa Palms Golf & County Club to learn how to play tennis, like they do every week.

They squealed with joy when hitting a ball back over the net, and laughed when they failed. A handful of volunteers gently tossed tennis balls their way, and would swat them back with hands, or catch them and throw them back, to help teach coordination. Some were determined to complete their tasks, while others were there primarily for the fun of it all.

“It’s so great,’’ Judy Moore said. “It’s just a big social event.”

Moore runs Tennis For Fun, a free tennis clinic for athletes with special needs. Tennis For Fun is a volunteer organization that teaches basic tennis skills, and stresses socialization, specializing in working with athletes of all ages who are intellectually handicapped, especially those who have Down Syndrome.

Moore’s son, Nathan, started the program 16 years ago as a high school senior at Tampa’s Jesuit High. He wanted to create something to do for special needs athletes, no doubt inspired by his mother, who had taught special education and religion for years.

Since then, Tennis For Fun has grown, from a humble beginning with just a few athletes in Brandon to now including eight different locations (Fishhawk Ranch, Tampa Tennis at Hillsborough Community College, Sandra Friedman Tennis Complex on Davis Islands, and Tampa Palms in Florida), in three states (Florida, Maine and Minnesota), with more than 100 athletes competing.

At Tampa Palms, they were wearing new, bright green T-shirts donated by ALOT (A League Of Our Own Tennis), and playing with racquets donated by other players and clubs. Interbay Tennis, a large Tampa Bay women’s weekly tennis league, also has provided assistance, and Tennis For Fun also has received grants to help pay for nets and balls. Both Tampa Palms and Hunter’s Green Country Clubs are designated as Special Olympics training centers.

In 2011, the United States Tennis Association (USTA) awarded the USTA Adaptive Tennis National Community Service Award to Tennis for Fun. “We were pretty proud to get that,’’ Moore says.

More than a dozen of the 100+ athletes currently competing in Tennis For Fun are at Tampa Palms, which recently added the program under the direction of tennis player and Tampa Catholic High assistant coach Marla Adams. Adams will run the clinic through May 26, every Thursday, 4 p.m.-5 p.m., for the 18-and-over athletes; Marla’s son Clay, a freshman tennis player at Tampa Catholic, coaches the 17-under group from 5 p.m.-6 p.m.

Clay, who originally got involved because he was trying to earn service hours at school, and Marla first met Moore while volunteering at the Brandon location. Moore had received some requests to start a program in New Tampa, but until she met Marla, she had no one to run it.

“I met her and she asked where I lived, and I said Tampa Palms,’’ Marla says. “She said, I have someone who wants to start a program (out there) but doesn’t want to be the head of it.”

Marla and Clay accepted the challenge. For Marla, it was a personal decision. When she had been pregnant with Clay, she was told there was a chance he would be born with Down Syndrome, or a full or partial extra copy of chromosome 21, which alters the course of an individual’s development.

Clay ended up not having Down Syndrome, but Marla said that moment stuck with her. So, when the chance arose to work with Down Syndrome children and adults, she says couldn’t resist.

With the Adamses working closely with Kass Pilczuk, the New Tampa YMCA Adaptive Coordinator, and Tampa Palms head pro Tom Judson, the program debuted last November.

“Kass has been very instrumental in helping us launch in New Tampa,’’ Marla said. “She has filtered a lot of her athletes at the YMCA through here.”

The response in New Tampa, says Moore, has been terrific.

While the Brandon program has more than 90 athletes, ages 8 to 58, New Tampa has seen its numbers steadily grow.

“People started talking about it, and people started coming,’’ says Dora Rattes, one of the volunteer coaches and supporters who helped bring the program to Tampa Palms.

Rattes used to take her special needs daughter Esther to Brandon to play tennis in the program. It was far from convenient, however.

“She really enjoyed it,’’ says Dora. “But I was thinking, we have Tampa Palms here (in New Tampa), and we have Hunter’s Green…”

Rattes knew there were enough special needs athletes in New Tampa to support such a program, and she knew there was a need. For many older special needs athletes, there is often little to do and few programs to participate in past high school.

“It is very important for them to stay active,’’ she said. “This is a sport they can play for life. This isn’t like soccer or basketball where you need a team to play. This is something you can do with just one other player.”

Esther is one of the program’s more advanced and experienced players. She recen

ly competed in the Special Olympics tennis at HCC March 19, and Marla says the plan for next year is to teach and send a large contingent of New Tampa special needs players to the event.

For now, the group is working on the fundamentals, growing their clinics and putting smiles on the faces of athletes learning the joy of a new sport.

For more information, call Judy Moore at 685-3923 or 417-3751, or visit TennisForFun.net.

New Tampa Wesley Chapel

Wesley Chapel grappler takes fifth at State Wrestling Championships

Torres Wesley Chapel High (WCH) junior wrestler Emmanuel Torres has been searching for an athletic outlet since he was a child.

He studied boxing growing up in New York. When he moved to Florida as a teenager, he took up karate. From karate he found Muay Thai kickboxing and later Jiu Jitsu.

He even tried out for the football team at WCH, but something was still missing.

He found what he was looking for on the wrestling mat. Now he’s looking for more.

Torres capped his best high school season yet by taking fifth at the Florida High School Athletic Association’s Class 2A Wrestling State Championships over the weekend. He advanced to the semifinals of the 138-pound division, before losing 8-1 to Brandon’s Frankie Bruno, who went on to win the championship. Torres fought his way through the consolation bracket to grab fifth with a 3-1 victory over Hadley Vadyak of Fort Myers.

Torres finished his season with a 56-11 record, emerging as one Class 2A, District 7’s top grapplers, no easy feat considering the district includes Lake Gibson and nationally-renowned Brandon, the state champions.

Torres was second at the 2A-7 district competition, advancing to regionals, where he finished fourth to qualify for the state tournament for the second straight year. Torres qualified for state as a sophomore last year, winning two matches there but not placing.

It was a long a challenging road to the mat for the Wildcat.

“I would try all these different sports and I would tell my mom that I just don’t feel it,” Torres says. “After wrestling my freshman year, I knew this is the sport. It’s challenging, it’s competitive and I’m really into it. I didn’t want to stop competing, getting better.”

Torres would wrestle on the grass practice fields after football with friend Sage Nugent. Nugent was a WCH varsity wrestler and the first to encourage Torres to try out for the wrestling team.

“When he (Torres) first came, he was quiet, nothing too adroit or deft or anything that really screamed, ‘special’,” Wesley Chapel wrestling coach Jeff Beson said. “In fact, he was beat up, day after day, by the veterans.”

Torres was still stuck in Jiu Jitsu mode, trying arm-bars and chokes when he first started in the wrestling room.

“I’d never even seen these circles (on the mat) before,” Torres said. “I would pull a Jiu Jitsu move and Sage would tell me I couldn’t do that in wrestling.”

Torres was called up to the varsity team his freshman year for districts. He remembers his first competition at Hernando High in Brooksville vividly.

“My first round match, I went against a kid from Anclote, pinned him but in the second round, I got (Pasco eventual state placer) Skyler White and he destroyed me,” Torres admits. “As a freshman, that was my first time going against a legit kid who knew what he was doing – it showed me how much work I needed to put into the sport to get (where he was).”

Despite the loss, Torres was not intimidated.

“He (Torres) stuck with it,’’ Beson said. “That was his thing, he’s a worker and got the itch to want more and has been like that ever since.”

In the summer between his freshman and sophomore years, Torres worked with the Wesley Chapel Wildcats Wrestling Club and had a breakthrough at The Father Divine National Qualifier tournament, where he realized that some of his martial arts skills translated to the wrestling mat.

“Jiu Jitsu really helps with your hips and transitions and riding legs,” Torres said. “It was something I found I was good at.”

Torres cut his teeth on the toughest of competition right there in the wrestling room, just behind the Wesley Chapel gymnasium. The Wildcat grappler benefitted by practicing with teammates like John Galvin, who graduated in 2014 after finished third at state in back-to-back seasons, and Tony Ruggiero, who won the state championship his senior year in 2013.

“They showed me that level where I have to be at that if I’m tired or I make a mistake, I have to keep trying, work harder,” he said. “They were always giving me little tips and things.”

Torres has aims at wrestling in college. With two state tournaments to his credit and his senior year in front of him, his prospects are pretty good. Torres isn’t dissuaded from how hard wrestling in college can be.

“People talk about how tough it is to wrestle in college but I like the hard work, it just makes me better,” Torres said.

But as much as Torres has grown to love wrestling, there’s still a few things about the sport he can’t get used to.

“Food discipline, always cutting weight. I weighed 160 over the summer and had to cut down to 138,” Torres said. “Today, I saw some cookies on top of the fridge and I thought, ‘Oh, man. I wanna eat that whole bag’.”

Wiregrass Ranch Tennis Team Looking For 3rd Straight State Title

The spring sports season — which includes baseball, softball, track & field and tennis — is upon us, and with it comes one burning question:

Can the Wiregrass Ranch High (WRH) boys tennis team, which had just one senior while winning the State Class 4A Championship last season, do it again?

The answer is not as easy as you might think.

Coach Dave Wilson’s best player and No. 1 singles player, Agie Moreno, has transferred to a tennis academy, and has taken junior brother Daniel with him. The team’s No. 2 singles player, Foresight Okungbowa, has graduated and now plays for Florida Tech in Melbourne. And Wilson’s No. 3 player, Alejandro Feliciano, moved back to California for his senior season.

So, instead of returning his entire state championship squad, as he had hoped after capturing the State title last April, Wilson returns hardly any of it.

That doesn’t mean, however, that he thinks his two-time defending state champs can’t make it three in a row this season.

The only Tampa Bay schools to ever win three straight boys tennis state championships are St. Petersburg Lakewood (1973-75) and New Tampa’s Paul R. Wharton High (2008-10).

WRH also won a “National Championship”last year — the DecoTurf High School Tennis Championships in Chattanooga, TN — beating the two-time defending champions from Illinois in the semifinals, and a team from Memphis in the final.

“To be honest with you, we have a shot at going back to the state tournament,’’ says Wilson, who is also the school’s athletic director and boys soccer coach. “Whether or not we can win state again depends on whether or not we can get the right people in the right spots.”

One of those right people would be junior Noah Makarome, one of the state’s top-rated players. A busy tournament schedule has kept Makarome, who is considered a blue chip, 5-Star college recruit, from competing for the Bulls in the past, but Wilson said the door is always open if Makarome thinks he can fit high school tennis into his schedule.

Makarome’s addition alone would make WRH one of the favorites to win the Class 4A title.

“I think it has sort of been left up to Noah,’’ Wilson says. “If he wants to, he can play, but he has a busy (junior) tournament schedule and I understand that completely. The door’s been open for him. If he has the interest or the time, we’d love to have him.”

Without him, Wilson says the team still has enough talent to keep it’s current run — which includes an 89-1 record in Pasco County matches the past 10 years — going for another year.

The Bulls will rely on senior and 3-star recruit Sebastian Castillo-Sanchez, who is undefeated the past two seasons and won the No. 4 singles State championship last year, and will move up to No. 1 for the Bulls this season.

At No. 2, promising freshman Destiny Okungbowa takes over.

Okungbowa’s brothers, Courage (now playing at Florida A&M in Tallahassee) and Foresight (Florida Tech) have been WRH standouts in the past, and sister Precious is the No. 1 player for the WRH girls team this season.

“At this stage, he is so much bigger and stronger than his brothers were,’’ Wilson says of Destiny Okungbowa.

While Wilson’s team lost a lot, it did gain Jared Abrams, a junior transfer from the Naples Tennis Academy, who will play at No. 3 singles.

Senior Lorcan Cavanaugh, who was the No. 6 player for the Bulls last season, will move up to No. 4, and junior Miles Caesar will fit in at No. 5.

Wilson, who led the WRH boys soccer team to a 21-3-3 record this season, said four players from that team have also come out to play tennis. In all, 16 players tried out, which Wilson attributes to the program’s heady success in recent years.

“It definitely helps,’’ Wilson said. “All of our kids at school know how good the tennis program has been. There’s actually interest in tennis, I guess, after you win two straight state titles, and last year we won a national title, so they want to know, how do I become part of that? I don’t know if we are even close to being at the capability of last year’s team, but I know everyone wants to be part of it if we could.”

The spring sports season is in full swing. Some upcoming games to check out involving local teams:

Feb. 12: Wharton at WRH baseball & softball, 7 p.m.

Feb. 22: WRH softball at Wesley Chapel High (WCH), 7:30 p.m.

Feb. 26: Wiregrass Ranch Track & Field Invitational, 3:30 p.m.

March 1: WRH tennis at WCH, 3:15 p.m.

Soccer Players Score On National Signing Day

soccersigning — *Wiregrass Ranch High soccer players (l.-r.) Vanessa Jordan, Chloe Lipovetsky, Camille King and Hanna Erdman, with their high school coach, Edwin Costa, on National Signing Day.*

National Signing Day (NSD) is known for the fervor it creates and the hullabaloo surrounding the top gridiron players who sign their national Letters of Intent (LOIs), but all was quiet in Wesley Chapel on Feb. 3 when it came to football.

“Futbol,” however, was another story.

At Wiregrass Ranch High (WRH), four players from the Bulls’ successful girls soccer team — Striker Vanessa Jordan, midfielder Chloe Lipovetsky, defender Camille King and sweeper Hanna Erdman — signed college LOIs.

The four have been teammates all four seasons at WRH, and helped lead the Bulls to a 16-6-1 record this past season. WRH advanced to the Class 5A, District semifinals, where it was eliminated 2-0 by Wharton.

The quartet of soccer stars helped WRH compile a 68-18-4 record in four seasons, with two playoff appearances, including a District title in 2013.

Jordan signed with Division II Flagler College in St. Augustine, FL. The Panthers compete in the Sunshine State Conference, along with nearby Saint Leo University in San Antonio.

She scored nine goals this past season for the Bulls, after leading the team with 26 the previous season.

In four seasons at WRH, Jordan scored 58 goals and added 20 assists.

Lipovetsky will play her college soccer at Division II Lander University in Greenwood, SC. She was the Bulls’ team MVP this season, scoring 18 goals and assisting on 12 others, both team highs.

Lipovetsky scored 12 goals as a junior, but did not play her sophomore year. For her career, she scored 32 times, and added 23 assists.

King signed with the University of West Florida in Pensacola. She will join a team that went 15-5-1 last season and qualified for the NCAA Division II Regionals.

King was an offensive-minded defender for the Bulls last season, picking up 33 steals in the back but also scoring seven goals and picking up 11 assists. She scored 22 times in her WRH career.

Erdman is headed to Division III Westminster College in New Wilmington, PA. Erdman was the Bulls top defensive player all four seasons at WRH, and was credited with 36 steals this past season, after notching 71 in 2014-15. In her four seasons, Erdman was credited with 168 steals.

WRH football coach Mark Kantor said he still expects to have some of his football players sign in the coming months. Wesley Chapel High did not hold a NSD ceremony this year.

Wiregrass Ranch girls hoopsters cement selves as district’s team to beat

By Andy Warrener

It’s still another week before district basketball tournaments heat up for area teams, but any suspense about who might be the Class 7A, District 8 top seed was quickly quashed coming out of Christmas break.

Wiregrass Ranch High (WRH) opened the new year with consecutive victories over what was expected to be its stiffest competition – Freedom, Plant and Steinbrenner — to clinch the top seed for the 7A-8 tournament starting Jan. 26 at Plant. WRH, now 20-2 on the season heading into tonight’s game at Tampa Catholic, will play Leto in the quarterfinals.

The day before, the WRH girls completed the regular season sweep of second-seeded Plant, doing so with star player Trakyra Kidd in foul trouble. Kidd got into foul trouble in the first half, and had to sit out for much of the second.

Without Kidd, the Bulls ended the third period on a 6-0 run. When Kidd returned in the fourth, the Bulls put Plant away 63-50.

“That win was a big moment for us moving forward,” WRH head coach John Gant said. “It was concrete that we saw when she (Kidd) wasn’t on the floor that we were not going to fold our tent, that we can play and play well without her.”

The Bulls and Kidd would follow up that performance the next night on the road against the Patriots. While Freedom kept the game close through the third period, Kidd went off in the fourth, scoring 12 of her 24 points and hitting all six of her free throws, making her 10-for-10 from the charity stripe on the night. The Bulls prevailed 49-43 and clinched the top spot in 7A-8, and two days beat Steinbrenner 54-42.

The Bulls host Sickles Friday in a 7A-8 contest.

Gant and Kidd lead one of the better girls basketball teams in the area. The Bulls have dropped only two games this season — a two-point loss to Seffner Christian in the season opener and a one-point loss to Palm Beach Gardens at the Florida Prospects Tournament in Orlando.

Three points are all that separates the Bulls from an unblemished record. Kidd has been a driving force in that endeavor.

“She has a mentality that she will not be stopped,” Gant said. “She has a nose for the goal and when you have lightning quickness and someone tries to stop you, it’s very difficult.

“She is one of the top two athletes in the area. This season, her maturity and her basketball intelligence have combined extremely well. She’s a coach’s dream. She makes me look good when the ball’s in her hands.”

Kidd is averaging just over 16.1 points per game, after scoring 9.8 last year. She also averages 6.4 rebounds, 5.5 steals and 4.3 assists a game.

Kidd has lots of help from a well-balanced WRH team.

Junior forward Stephanie Brower, who is averaging 10.7 points and 8.8 rebounds a game, is one of the team’s most potent inside threats.

“She (Brower) is the second-best athlete on the team and plays tremendous defense,” Gant said. “She has great basketball intelligence and she’s one of the key leaders when TK (Kidd) is out.”

Junior guard Melissa Gordon is the team’s deep threat. Gordon has nailed 29 of the team’s 41 three-pointers this season and presents a great second option to Kidd.

“She (Gordon) has been hitting key shots for us this year,” Gant said. “She’s very difficult to guard.”

Sophomore guard Alexis Boldon and junior forward Nicole Carey are additional threats.

“Boldon has that wiry, won’t quit attitude,” Gant says. “She’s one that always has the motor running and can help handle the ball…and she plays well inside.”

Junior guard Brooke Preiser comes off the bench and averages more than four points a game. Senior forward Alima James adds some more force inside with rebounding and blocked shots.

As the district playoffs loom, the Bulls have an extra layer of confidence knowing they can keep the train on the rails even without Kidd.

“The Plant game made me happy because I could see that even if I get in foul trouble, we’ll be more confident knowing the team can handle it,” Kidd said.